1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to footwear and more particularly to an improved system for selectively illuminating lighting devices incorporated into footwear.
2. The Prior Art
It is well known to incorporate lighting devices into footwear. Lighting devices have been incorporated into a wide variety of footwear including athletic shoes and dress shoes. The incorporation of lighting devices in footwear enables the wearer to be more easily seen, especially when visibility is reduced due to inclement weather conditions or darkness. Intermittent illumination, or flashing, of these lighting devices further increases the wearer's ability to be seen as flashing lighting devices are more readily perceived by others.
There are known in the art several different implementations of footwear lighting systems that produce flashing lights. These implementations typically rely on the opening and closing of a switch to create the flashing effect. Many different types of switches have been used to create this effect. For example, pressure switches, mercury switches, and spring switches have all been used to generate flashing lights in footwear. However, in all of these systems, flashing only occurs in response to the connection or disconnection of the circuit created by the opening and closing of the switch. Furthermore, in systems with a plurality of lights, the lights are illuminated in unison, with all of the lights being illuminated at the same time.
There are also known in the art implementations of footwear lighting systems that control the illumination of a plurality of lights through a series of illumination patterns independent of changes in inertial forces on the system. Such systems, however, have been very complex and require complex control circuits to operate. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,457,900 to Roy, titled "Footwear Display Device," selectively illuminates certain ones of a plurality of lights in response to a velocity measurement made by the system and a control circuit containing a predetermined pattern of illumination. Once this system begins to operate, it steps through a series of illumination patterns in which the pattern of illuminated lights changes in response to the passage of time and without regard to any changes in inertial forces on the system. The steps are recorded in a complex control circuit and require the measurement of the velocity of the moving footwear to determine the duration of the changing patterns of illumination.